Colin Linden - guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer - is one of Nashville’s most interesting musicians. You may have seen him in the Americana Awards house band, or as a key live musician on the TV series Nashville or in the dynamic Canadian country rock band Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. He wasn't born into the blues but he sure found the music early and made it his own, through a very early meeting with Howlin Wolf and a pilgrimage through the Deep South in his teens. He's also been a lon...
Mar 05, 2019•59 min
Fifteen years ago, Mindy Smith rocketed from local sets in Nashville to the national stage in a matter of a few months on the strength of a duet on "Jolene" with Dolly Parton and the January 2004 release of her debut album One Moment More. She became the first winner of the Americana Music Association Emerging Artist award, and wide audiences embraced her empathic songs and translucent voice. The years since have seen periods of high profile touring and periods of quiet. She's preparing to step ...
Feb 19, 2019•1 hr
Episode #81: This week, the long, diverse career of Nashville's Bill Lloyd. From country hits as a writer and artist to collaborations with leading lights of rock and pop, Bill is a dynamo. And he's got a fantastic new album out called Working The Long Game. We hit a lot of points of Bill’s biography in our conversation, but the essentials to know going in are that he moved to Nashville after college in Bowling Green, KY to write songs. He met fellow writer Radney Foster and they shot to fame in...
Feb 12, 2019•59 min
If Americana values all American roots forms and the fusion thereof, then nobody's more Americana than Austin singer/songwriter Ruthie Foster. She grew up singing in church in rural TX, developed a variety of skills in bands while serving in the US Navy, then became a folk troubadour who slips from country to soul to blues to gospel with ease. She has been one of if not the flagship artist for Austin’s excellent Blue Corn Music record label since 2002. She’s been featured on a guitar blues tour ...
Jan 29, 2019•1 hr
Missy Raines grew up in rural west VA deeply immersed in bluegrass culture. And when she started playing professionally in her collegiate years, she went for it with, as she tells me, no plan B but a life in the music she loved. Over a couple of decades as a side musician, she became a pioneer and a scene favorite, winning seven IBMA awards for her bass playing alone. In 2008, she made real a long-standing dream of starting her own band, which became a vehicle for her innovative fusion-minded co...
Jan 21, 2019•1 hr
The String launches a new year with a conversation with Rodney Crowell, one of the legit icons of Americana music. The Texas born, Nashville based songwriter was one of the artists around whom the format was created 20 years ago, and indeed he won the Americana Music Association's lifetime achievement award for songwriting in 2006. He’s a valued collaborator, earning a Grammy Award for his recent work with his longtime friend and colleague Emmylou Harris. He became an acclaimed author with his m...
Jan 15, 2019•1 hr 1 min
How and why this humble collection of towns hugging the Tennessee River in northern Alabama became a historic musical hot spot is an improbable, wonderful American story. But I grew interested in Muscle Shoals of today. More and more, roots and rock and roll musicians have been traveling there to record. A string of remarkable bands and songwriters, including Jason Isbell, John Paul White, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Dylan LeBlanc and The Secret Sisters, has emerged from the area in recent ye...
Dec 18, 2018•1 hr 1 min
This week, an evenly split hour with very different artists who have a lot to say about change and growth. The Gibson Brothers took their experience from two decades in bluegrass and poured it into a radically different project written and produced with Dan Auerbach. Ruby Boots has been "shedding her skin" regularly through a life on at least three continents. She's now a mainstay in the East Nashville scene and her 'Don't Talk About It' is a masterful album....
Dec 11, 2018•1 hr 2 min
Bob Dylan's transition from solo folk troubadour to electric roots rocker was as important a precursor to the idea of Americana music as any other. And that transition reached its apex with the 1966 masterpiece Blonde On Blonde . We devote this whole episode to the album. My featured guest is longtime Nashville music journalist Daryl Sanders who's just published That Thin Wild Mercury Sound, the first book to carefully track how and why Dylan came to Music City to work with young and creative se...
Dec 04, 2018•59 min
Episode 74: Kathy Mattea's new album Pretty Bird is her first release in six years. In the time between, she’s struggled through some problems with her voice and in so doing reached outside of her musical comfort zones. After a couple of albums dedicated to exploring her Appalachian heritage, this one’s more eclectic. She calls it a journey back to singing for the sheer joy of it. Mattea has always been a gifted interpreter from her younger days as a Music Row demo singer through her years as CM...
Nov 21, 2018•59 min
What is tradition in music? It turns out that's a tricky but illuminating question, and this week Craig puts it to a range of folks at the World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, NC. CJ Lewandowski of the hot new Po' Ramblin' Boys (pictured) want to build bridges between fans of the inside and outside. Doyle Lawson applies it to the atmosphere he's set at his 39-year-old festival in Denton, NC. John Showman describes how the Lonesome Ace String Band produces traditional sounding music without thinking li...
Nov 06, 2018•59 min
This week circles back one final time to AmericanaFest 2018, where a global community dedicated to American roots music gathered and networked and listened to some of the world’s best music. Amy Helm, out solo after a decade with Olabelle and working with her late great father Levon, is an exceptional singer with the new album This Too Shall Light. Veteran alt-country and bluegrass singer songwriter Robbie Fulks showcased his new rollicking boogie woogie rock and roll project with pianist and si...
Oct 23, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Episode #71: This week we get out of the studio for three radio field trips with some remarkable songwriter/artists. First I visit with Rayland Baxter at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum about his explosively colorful new album Wide Awake. Next it’s off to the ballpark for nine questions in nine innings with rocking country songwriter Nora Jane Struthers. Finally I sit on the upper deck of the famous Mercy Lounge taking in the Nashville skyline with Gary Louris of the venerable, always rele...
Oct 15, 2018•1 hr
Episode 70: Shemekia Copeland was born to sing, raised by blues royalty. Her dad, Johnny Clyde Copeland, took his Louisiana and Texas roots to the New York City area where he based a career that landed him a Grammy award and a spot in the Blues Hall of Fame. Shemekia sang all her life and by 18 she was on record and on the minds of everyone looking at the next generation of the blues. And she’s won a raft of awards in her genre. Thing is though, she’s a wide ranging artist who wants to see the b...
Oct 10, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Episode 69 is the first in a series of shows reporting on artists who performed at AmericanaFest 2018, the most wide-ranging and diverse convention in its 19 years. Americana continues to represent and promote classic country music, bluegrass and songwriter-driven roots music. It also has become more reflective of the blues, soul and regional folk styles. This week Craig visits with Mississippi raised blues musician Cedric Burnside, a key figure in the legacy and spread of the Hill Country blues...
Sep 25, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Episode 68: At 31 years old, Brittany Haas has been in high level touring string bands more than half her life and she's already regarded as one of the finest fiddle players in the world. As part of Crooked Still, she helped shape a new strain of traditional Americana. Of late she's been touring with the Dave Rawlings Machine, playing as part of the house band on public radio's Live From Here with Chris Thile and producing stunning instrumental music with her quartet Hawktail. We talk about her ...
Sep 11, 2018•1 hr
Since the 1980s and a golden age of Nashville pub rock and alt-country, Webb Wilder has been The Last of the Full Grown Men, a crowd-rousing, semi-campy, always hard rocking blend of SUN Records rock and roll, surf music and hillbilly twang. He was born and raised in Hattiesburg, MS - a music freak from the get go. He and a high school friend launched themselves into music by moving to Austin in the mid 70s. But in Nashville Webb fulfilled his identity and his destiny. He's just released Powerfu...
Sep 05, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Episode #66: At 76 years old, Steve Cropper is in ideal position to reflect on an abundant, history making life in music, and he does so in this week’s show. It’s a special edition taped on stage in front of an eager audience at Nashville’s Who Knew at City Winery. The series features speakers from the local to the world famous, on matters of creativity, entrepreneurship and mission. And Steve Cropper and his history with Stax Records represent all of those in abundance. Cropper grew up in Memph...
Aug 28, 2018•59 min
Episode 65: To understand the unique and intricate Nashville based quintet Cordovas, you’ve got to flash back to the early 2000s when a songwriter from North Carolina named Joe Firstman was tearing it up in Los Angeles. Blazingly talented, he got signed to Atlantic Records but it was a brutal time for the music industry and he went his own way in 2005. He was the bandleader for a late night network show. Then it was time for rebuilding - and over a lot of years, Cordovas became the result. With ...
Aug 20, 2018•1 hr
We’re spending much of this hour with someone who’s as thoughtful and articulate about her art as the art itself. Gretchen Peters is a lover of language. She has awe and appropriate respect for the power of words and healthy fear of their misuse. And while I would place her among the most literary of songwriters - Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan are among her heroes - there’s nothing aloof or unreachable in her work. Her reputation in country music was secured by recordings and hits for George Strai...
Aug 07, 2018•1 hr 2 min
This week's episode of The String (#63) is about a sense of place and how we stand up for the places we cherish. Nashville has thrived as the epicenter of country music songwriting in part because of its own strong sense of place. It was a mid South crossroads city that welcomed art and music from the 19th century on. It became a pioneer in radio in the 20s and 30s by reflecting and broadcasting local values and sounds. Then in the mid 1950s, music business innovators and instigators began to cl...
Jul 31, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Erin Rae came of age in Nashville and dropped out of college to get serious about music. She is a pure product of Music City's richly rewarding community, veteran of open mics and local venues. Her first album Soon Enough turned a lot of heads. Now her follow up, the moody and gorgeous but emotionally candid Putting On Airs, is earning national acclaim. She's one of East Nashville's new stars, and we talk about Cafe Coco, her all-woman songwriting posse and singing alongside Margo Price at the R...
Jul 24, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Episode 61: Craig H. and sometime producer companion Gina Frary Bacon sit down with iconic Nashville Cat Wayne Moss. Raised in Charleston WV, Moss was obsessed with music and recording and made his way to Music City in 1959. He put his guitar to work with The Casuals, Nashville's first rock and roll band. And his web of relationships - Buzz Cason, Charlie McCoy, Norbert Putnam, Mac Gayden and others - put him at the center of the recording scene. He played famous licks and solos for Roy Orbison,...
Jul 09, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Her recording career began in 2011 with an alt-country album whose title asked: Have You Met Lera Lynn? We hope you've met her by now because in the seven years since, the Athens GA-turned-Nashville TN songwriter has emerged as a fascinating and dynamic artist with a grasp of sound and production along with her mesmerizing voice. Her newest record finds her co-writing and collaborating. Plays Well With Others is a set of co-written duets with some important indie artists, including Peter Bradley...
Jul 05, 2018•59 min
In Episode 59 of The String we dive deep into the Austin/Nashville dynamic captured in the new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum special exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring 70s. Our feature interview is with Michael Martin Murphey. Best known to many for his crossover hit “Wildfire” from the summer of ‘75, Murphey’s had a wide ranging career. His songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash and Lyle Lovett among others. And he’s earned abundant recognition for his decades as a cha...
Jun 25, 2018•1 hr 2 min
The Travelin' McCourys began as a side project - an outlet for Del McCourys sons and their bandmates to pursue experiments and collaborations. Over the past eight years, they've developed a repertoire and an identity all their own, and with the addition of full time guitarist Cody Kilby, a personnel they at last called official. So now they've released their debut self-titled album and launched a limitless future, for now very much in parallel to the iconic Del McCoury Band, arguably the most in...
Jun 08, 2018•1 hr 2 min
Rev. Sekou is an activist, writer, theologian and community organizer with a dense resume stretching back to before the 2000s. He says he found his calling at age 19 when he visited the Highlander Center, the research and education retreat in East TN where legions of civil rights activists have been trained and where the song 'We Shall Overcome' was adapted to the central struggle of the American 20th century. Sekou has been a pastor in New York and Boston. He’s worked on the ground in Haiti aft...
Jun 06, 2018•1 hr 4 min
This week, two conversations with country music families at their heart. First, up a feature interview with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band co-founder Jeff Hanna and his wife, songwriter Matraca Berg. Matraca’s mother wrote songs and had other family in the business. She’s had a commanding career with numerous hits including the CMA song of the year 1997, “Strawberry Wine.” Berg is also a deeply respected recording artist who makes albums as exceptional as they are rare. Hanna migrated to Music City from...
May 22, 2018•1 hr 1 min
In Nashville, the greatest guitar town in the world, Guthrie Trapp is at the top of the mountain. He can range across every style, improvise with endless invention and subtlety. He can shred or twang or drift elegantly. And most of the time, he’s a sideman and studio player. A player in demand for being able to serve and enhance a song and do no more than what’s called for. But he’s also a mind-bending solo artist. And his second LP as a leader and composer came out this spring. It’s called Life...
May 07, 2018•1 hr 3 min
Kim Richey launched her career later than most, after her old friend and college band mate Bill Lloyd (of Foster & Lloyd) urged her to move to Music City. And after one of the most powerful executives in the music business introduced himself after a show and our guileless heroine had no idea who he was. Kim's crafty and tuneful mingling of folk, country and jangle pop was well formed when she released her debut album in 1995. Since then she's explored collaborations with diverse producers bu...
May 01, 2018•1 hr 1 min
